Use in Battle
Rifled muskets were heavily used in the American Civil War. The American-made Springfield Model 1861 was the most widely used weapon in the war, and the British Pattern 1853 Enfield was the second most widely used.
The British Enfield was also used in the Crimean War where its greater range gave it great success against the much shorter ranged Russian smoothbore muskets.
The rifled muskets were not always successful on the battlefield, however. In the Italian War of 1859, French forces defeated Austrian rifled muskets by aggressive skirmishing and rapid bayonet assaults at close range.
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Famous quotes containing the word battle:
“Forty years after a battle it is easy for a noncombatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to have to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)